Wednesday, 26 June 2013.
Great sunny evening to take the boys over to Mission, a heavily damaged community, close to downtown and the Elbow river.
June 21, 2012 Calgary got the biggest flood ever. A couple days later evacuated home owners and volunteers were allowed to come back to their homes.
The city put every effort into helping with the massive cleanup. Folks piled up the damaged material out onto the boulevards in front of their homes for later pickup. Dumpster bins were dropped off along the roads in front of homes. We, as a volunteer crew, took on the job of filling the dumpsters.
Shortly after we got there, a mom and her son who were pulling a wagon of water bottles, offered us water in case we were thirsty. Hadn't really put any effort into it just yet, but we accepted a couple bottles for later. After filling a couple of dumpsters more folks came by offering us pizza and cake they have from their crews. The spirit of sharing and helping others was phenomenal. We met many other volunteer groups and just individual that rode down on their bikes to pitch in. We all work together and walked from dumpster to dumpster to garbage truck.
Boys had a great experience. One almost went home with a fur coat found to the garbage. He thought of it after we were driving home that it would be great for a costume he was working on. So as school was done tomorrow, he was going to pedal his bike down here again, help out for the day, and see if he could find that coat again.
I got myself 4 hockey sticks in great shape to add to our floor hockey collection. Enjoying those the next time our boys have a street hockey game in the parking lot.
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Karl Burndorfer, Kendall Cahoon - Scout Leaders |
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Ethan Conrad. RJ Laigo, Michael Laigo, Hale Aquino, Jacob Kellestine, Seth Ek, Sam Lloyd, - Scouts |
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Adam Encarno, Matt Whitely, Ray Aquino - Parents and other youth leaders |
The team arrives |
The typical boulevard in front of a flooded house. |
One bin done, onto the next |
Boys are ready for more... |
Going to check around this corner... |
Great, another one, lets pitch in... |
Everything is soggy and you really need shovels to do a good job. |
Pretty easy to get dirt doing this job. Someone told us if you show up
dirty at Peter's Drive-in you get free food. We didn't have time to check
that out, but we did have some pressure to find out.
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See, there was grass under there... |
Some other folks join in. |
Starting to bring garbage from the other side of the street now. |
This dumpster is almost full. |
You missed some garbage over there Hale. |
Finishing across the road now... |
Let the leaders do a bit of heavy lifting here. |
Boots are good. Still lots of puddle to walk through. |
Just hose it down now and the grass will be as good as new. |
Done another one. |
So this is what drywall turns into when its wet. |
The pizza fairies came by... |
This stuff disappears almost as fast as the garbage |
Ooh, cake too? |
Apple, Cake, Pizza, what to choose, hmmm |
Here is our first opportunity working with a garbage truck. He squishes it
in and you dump more on. |
Jacob, wanting to work the controls |
I could do this. |
OK, ready to take another gulp. |
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